


no kingdom to come

by iceberry



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Extremely Fraught Men, Jealousy, M/M, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 11:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceberry/pseuds/iceberry
Summary: Hadrian doesn't understand why he has been given mercy by a god he has no desire to serve. Tabard doesn't either.





	no kingdom to come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gillfrond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillfrond/gifts).



> secret samol pinch hit for gillfrond! i took the wording "also some or all of these fraught men should kiss" from the prompt and ran with it. it may have been kind of an extreme interpretation of "i'd prefer not fluff" but uhhhhhh it's definitely fraught! i went back and relistened to bits of aih for the first time in months to try and research for this lol but please forgive any inaccuracies! and also if there's anything samot's said in the most recent few eps i'm currently a bit behind there so also forgive that. uhhh slight cw for thoughts of self-mutilation? but really slight

Hadrian keeps expecting something to change in his mind as he waits in the cage he woke up in, guarded by Pala-din. They are mostly unmoving, and he sees them as dark silhouettes through the iron bars that he can’t even begin to summon the energy to break out of right He keeps waiting for something to change in his body too, wait for the slow creep of the marble up his arm to continue past his shoulder. It doesn’t, and he isn’t entirely sure what that means about what he is, or what he’s becoming. He drifts in and out of sleep, his injuries stabilized but his body still exhausted from the energy of stitching itself back together. Nobody brings him food, but he doesn’t need it. _Samothes still hears my prayers_ , he thinks when he realizes how long he’s gone without eating.

The first time he sees Tabard since the battle - how many days has it been? a week? - the sight of him almost shocks Hadrian out of the confusion he’s been in since he found himself stranded here, if only because the wounds the Pala-din maintained during the battle are still open and unhealed. A golden eyepatch covers the eye that Hadrian had watched him pull out and throw across the throne room, pale marble gashes cut through dark skin that hasn’t healed yet, if it ever will.

“Where are the others?” Hadrian asks, voice croaking a bit from disuse. “My friends. Fantasmo, Throndir - the elves, a human woman and-”

“They are gone.” Tabard gives him a steely gaze, looking down at him, hand still resting on his sword. “The orc broke a mirror and fled using some strange magic. Probably thought you were dead. You were close to it.” Hadrian slumps back into the corner of the cage, exhausted and defeated and perhaps even resigned, and looks back up at him.

“How much longer?”

“Till what?”

“Until it’s over. Until I’m pala-din.”

Tabard has not been smiling as he evaluates the man in front of him, but now his lips (they look so human, but Hadrian can’t forget the sight of the stone chest he cut through to) turn downwards into a frown. “My lord has decided to handle you a bit differently. _Our_ lord,” he corrects himself, and slips a key off of a loop and moves to open the cage. It unlocks with a click and the door swings open.

“Do not think this means you can leave,” Tabard says, turning away. “You will still serve.” Punctuating his words with a demonstration, he raises his arm and clenches his hand into a fist; Hadrian feels his own hand clench at his side.

Hadrian watches as Tabard leaves him alone with the open cage and the pala-din that still stand guard in front of it. They do not move, but it’s as if an energy radiates off of them, silently humming through the air. _They’ll kill me if I try to leave now_ , Hadrian thinks, and lets himself fall back to sleep.

◊

Slowly, but surely, and with no help from Tabard, Hadrian recovers. He wonders why Samot has decided to treat him differently but couldn’t be bothered to fix up his wounds, before deciding that he’s glad the god didn’t - that would just be another confusing message in a situation that has been making his head spin since he woke up. It would be a stretch to call Samot’s treatment of him (through Tabard) _kinder_ than expected. But each time he becomes aware of the curve of his shoulder where the marble meets his flesh, Hadrian is reminded that he has been given some sort of mercy, which is harder to understand than if he were given none at all.

The second he can wield a blade again again, Tabard has him at work. He puts Hadrian through drills, orders pala-din to spar with him until his bones _ache_ and he can hardly stand. His wounds reopen and ache; he’s given armor, but it takes days before he can move half as well in it as he could in his old suit.

He’s put onto patrols, close to the encampment at first, but gradually he’s sent further and further out, and he begins to construct a map in his mind of the tower in all its enormity. There’s never any fewer than 5 other pala-din with him at any given time, and training by fighting against them has tempered Hadrian’s expectations of how well he would be able to hold up in a fight.

Tabard, for the most part, ignores him, save for the occasional warning that he should not try to leave or critique of his performance. He speaks to all the pala-din, reminds them of their task and the glory of the Boy-King Matured. Hadrian can’t help but wonder what the point is of talking to a camp of statues.

It is lonely. He misses his friends, his home, his family. As much as anger burns in the pit of Hadrian’s stomach when he sees Tabard - for keeping him here, for trying to pull him from his god, he finds himself wishing

Then Samot arrives.

He comes from the City of First Light one day, accompanied by several servants and guards (but still with a smaller procession than Hadrian recalls from his splintered memories of the throne room). When he appears at the entryway to the base, hundreds of marble soldiers turn at once to tilt their heads to him in veneration. Tabard turns half a second later and drops onto his knees immediately.

“Welcome, my Lord,” he says, and looks up at the god, an expression akin to longing on his face.

“Stand, Alon,” Samot says, and he scrambles to his feet as the god walks forward, surveying his troops.

“Why have you gifted us your presence, my god?” Samot does not answer, and glides past Tabard straight towards, procession close behind him. He’s inclined his head, more out of an useless instinct to try to blend in with the hundred of marble soldiers he stands amongst, but looks up as the god approaches him. It almost feels beyond his control, magnetic. He does not fight it.

The intensity of Samot has not faded, but it is different to see him like this - real, physical, up close and not across a room while dying. He is still imposing, but he is also staggeringly beautiful. Since the last time Hadrian saw him, his hair has grown, now falling a bit past his shoulders in gentle waves. ( _How long have I been here?_ Hadrian asks himself, not for the first time, but doesn’t have the time to linger over it.)

“Hello, Hadrian.” Samot says, and smiles at him.

Hadrian opens his mouth to respond, then closes it. He has spent his entire life in the service of a god. The man barely feet away from him is not _his_ god, but his presence is still almost overwhelming.

“You have served Samothes with great loyalty,” the god continues, and reaches out to touch him. Samot places a hand on Hadrian’s marble arm, feeling through the fabric of his shirt where the stone is ungiving; then moving upwards until he feels where the marble ends and the flesh begins. He smiles again, and Hadrian finds it hard to look away from his gaze. “I hope that you will serve me just as well.”

◊

Samot visits not infrequently now, and Tabard is not subtle about the fact that this is a new development now that he is here, and regards the fact that Hadrian is the cause for this change to be distasteful at best.

Tabard is devoted to Samot. When he speaks to the other Pala-din, he extols the Boy King with a fervor that Hadrian recognizes. For all of his anger towards Tabard - though perhaps even anger isn’t the right word, because it implies that Hadrian understands how he should be reacting to everything happening to him - he can’t help but respect him for that. As little as he wants to acknowledge any similarities between them, the paladin will admit that in conviction to their respective gods, and nothing else, they are deeply alike.

“Tabard,” Samot says one day as he walks down rows of pala-din, appraising them. Hadrian is close enough to hear, and finds himself straightening up for Samot, though he knows he shouldn’t care.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“I would like to borrow Hadrian for a bit. Find someone to take his patrols if he is needed.”

Tabard’s face falls a bit, but he clenches his jaw and nods. “Of course.”

Samot looks at Hadrian, and gestures for him to follow. He leaves his procession behind and heads out through the ruins, white cloak fluttering with his quick steps. Hadrian follows silently for some time, but can’t help but speak up when the silence begins to weigh on him more than the armor.

“Where are we going?”

“There used to be a library a bit further down,” Samot responds, not slowing down a bit. “I would like to see what books remain. And I hope to know you a bit better.”

Hadrian almost stumbles at those words, the bizarre weight of why this god wants to know _him_ better hitting him like a blow to the chest. But he recovers, and follows Samot silently into a section of the tower that does seem to resemble a library, though the rubble seems picked over, with no books immediately visible.

“Why did you…” He almost says _spare me_ , but stops himself, wary of the insult that might imply. Samot may not be _his_ god, but he is still a god, and the very ground they walk is evidence of his power. Hadrian is flawed, and he has made mistakes, and knows this, but he is not so foolish as to insult a god knowingly. “Why am I not pala-din? Not like the others.”

Samot glances over his shoulder at Hadrian, tossing his hair as he does so. “Do you still pray to Samothes?” he responds.

 _That isn’t an answer_ , Hadrian thinks, but bites his tongue. “Yes, of course.”

“And does he respond?”

“In his actions, yes,” Hadrian says. He is somehow, still on his quest for his god - it has been months, at least, since food passed his lips, so he knows Samothes has not abandoned him completely. The questions he has about the tower have changed as he has learned about it, but he is still searching for answers.

“And are you certain it’s truly him?” Samot asks, and it’s asked in the voice of someone who knows something that casts their own question in a very different light.

“Absolutely,” Hadrian responds, and quickly fails to disguise the insult that question registers. “I am a Defender of the Undying Fire, an officer of the Order of Eternal Princes. I have faith in my god.”

“Of course,” Samot says, but there is something unreadable in his voice. He reaches for a book half-hidden under crumbled stone, dusts it off, tucks it under his arm. “I am not sure why I asked.”

When they arrive back at the camp, Hadrian can feel Tabard’s eyes burning into him, though he makes an effort not to make eye contact with the pala-din. “I will be using Hadrian as my personal guard on occasion from here on out. Make sure he is available.”

Tabard’s focus immediately shifts to Samot, and Hadrian watches as shock flashes over  “My lord, I’m not sure why - we have pala-din who are far more competent than him.”

“I will be using Hadrian,” Samot repeats firmly, and Tabard presses his lips into a thin line and nods. Hadrian can _feel_ the anger radiating off of the pala-din, and can’t help but feel some slight superiority, even if it’s not a task he wants to be conscribed to.

He does guard Samot throughout the tower after that. Not every day, but enough that it is no longer a surprise when the god of knowledge arrives from the City of First Light and leads him to where a library used to stand, or a store, or a craftsman’s shop. He seems to remember everything that used to stand here, and with a certain amount of pride.

Hadrian learns things about his Lord. Samot doesn’t tell him much up front, which isn’t surprising, and despite Samot’s stated intentions of getting to know Hadrian better, most of the excursions are filled with Samot commenting on the ruins he instructs Hadrian to search through in search of this book, or that necklace, despite the fact that there are hundreds of pala-din who could be doing these tasks with far more ease than the human can.

But Samot lets things slip - mentions that the City of First Light was not always known as that when Hadrian stumbles across an old map of a place named “Marielda.” The details are still vague to him, but the war is mentioned more than once, and the conflict between the two gods comes into focus bit by bit. And bit by bit, Hadrian realizes that there is more history to this war than a sequence of battles over some disagreement.

Hadrian finds a finely-wrought golden bracelet one afternoon. Samot holds it up to the light, and in a voice that doesn’t seem to fit talking about one’s enemy in a war, quietly says, “He always was good at making jewelry.” The god straightens up and slips the bracelet into a pouch. “That’s enough for today. Let’s return.”

Hadrian knows the tower grounds well enough at this point that he could make his way back to the encampment by himself, but Samot walks back with him. _He still doesn’t trust me not to run away_ , Hadrian thinks, then decides that that’s probably a fair assessment. When they arrive back, Samot turns to him before leading his procession back to the top of the tower.

“Thank you, Hadrian,” he says, and though there’s no loss of presence in the god’s stance, something in the god’s countenance seems far off. Nostalgic, perhaps. “You remind me of myself when I was a younger man,” Samot continues, apropos of nothing. “And perhaps a bit of _him_ as well.” He raises a hand to Hadrian’s cheek, and runs it along his jaw; Hadrian freezes in place and physically exhales when Samot pulls his hand back. His heart is pounding in his ears as Samot leaves, blood rushing to his head.

From across the encampment, he can feel Tabard watching him.

◊

“Hadrian,” Tabard’s voice cuts through the night, and Hadrian’s eyes fly open. He is always on alert here, and doesn’t sleep well, even when the day’s work tires him to his bones. (And, though he almost tries to avoid thinking it out of fear that somehow Samot or Tabard will _know_ that he’s considering it, the lighter he sleeps the easier it will be to flee. “Get up. You are joining me on patrol.”

Hadrian pauses, then begins to sit up and gather his armor. _There’s obviously something else going on here_ , he thinks. He knows the patrols, he knows that he never has any with Tabard and that Tabard rarely has any real patrols to begin with. The two men walk out of the tower into the warm air surrounding it, staying close to the side of the fallen building as they venture out.

“Why does he take such an interest in you?” the pala-din asks when they are far out of earshot from the, and even in the dark, Hadrian can see Tabard’s grip tighten on the hilt of his sword. He reaches for his own blade slowly, but Tabard catches sight of the movement out of the corner of his eye and pulls Hadrian’s arm back to the human’s side. “Do not try.”

“I don’t know,” Hadrian responds honestly. “I _wish_ I knew.”

“Bullshit,” Tabard replies, and turns on his heel to move towards Hadrian, who stops in his tracks. “You have something he wants. Information about Samothes, about the war, _something_.”

“Are you just saying that because you don’t have whatever it is he wants?” Hadrian replies, and Tabard immediately shoves Hadrian back, a low noise coming from the back of his throat. Tabard pushes with more force than Hadrian expects to feel from a single arm, and it reminds him that he is _not_ human, as easy as it is to forget now that the marble no longer shows through his skin and the eyepatch covers the stone niche in his face. Hadrian stumbles, and Tabard’s hand goes to the base of his throat and pushes him against the wall.

“Imagine,” Tabard says, spitting the words out with a vitriol Hadrian has never heard the pala-din use. “You were like me. _Completely_ like me. A tool, a perfect instrument of your lord’s intentions. And he chooses not to acknowledge you,” Tabard’s hand tightens a bit. “Imagine your esteemed Samothes giving his favor to some _fool_ who you nearly killed in honest battle. You’re a man of faith. You can imagine that, can’t you?”

He isn’t pressing hard enough to cut off the air from reaching Hadrian’s lungs, but he still starts feeling around on the wall behind him with his other hand. “I don’t want to be here,” he says. “If I was allowed to leave, I would in a heartbeat.”

“And if I were allowed, you would have died in the City of First Light from those wounds.” Just as he begins wiggling a loose stone out of the wall, Tabard drops his grip on Hadrian’s neck, and the paladin falls forward.

Tabard seems distracted, perhaps even distressed, and Hadrian tries to take the opportunity to draw his sword, but Tabard begins speaking again. “What does he see in you? You’re useless, I almost killed you, you don’t even acknowledge him as the true king.” He is angry, and bitter, but his words somehow seem less directed at Hadrian now.

“I don’t know,” Hadrian responds anyways, and Tabard glares at him. His eyes are burning, their faces so close that Hadrian can feel his breath against his neck. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Tabard, furious, kisses him.

Despite himself, despite _everything_ , Hadrian kisses him back. It is not a sweet kiss by any measure. It is a violent kiss, it’s a jealous, angry kiss; teeth clatter together in their haste, Hadrian thinks he tastes blood in his mouth. Tabard’s beard is rough against Hadrian’s chin, his lips are soft - but when he pushes back, Hadrian realizes they only give so much before he can feel the hard stone beneath.

Tabard pulls back suddenly when he feels Hadrian’s mouth push against the stone beneath his skin, and stares at him, eye wide. He looks caught between shock and fear, and still furious at the same time.

“Go,” Tabard says, stepping back so Hadrian can get out of where he’s pressed up against the wall. “ _Now_.”

Hadrian goes.

◊

“You are not happy here,” Samot says on an excursion a day later, maintaining eye contact for a second longer than necessary as he passes Hadrian a book with a title written in a language he cannot read. Their fingers brush, and Hadrian yanks his hand back like he’s been burnt. Samot raises an eyebrow, and the paladin turns away from him.

“No,” Hadrian responds. He’s distracted, he’s been distracted since the other night. Tabard has not spoken to him since, which is fine by Hadrian, but it’s doing little to help calm his thoughts down. He is on edge, and his patience is thin right now, even for the god.

“I am sorry for that,” Samot says.

“Are you?” Hadrian asks. _That seems unlikely_ , he thinks.

“I am. I can see it in your face, and it doesn’t suit you.”

Hadrian scoffs a bit and moves away, pushing some rubble around in a facsimile of trying to find something.

“There is so much that you do not understand,” Samot says, and although there’s sympathy in the god’s voice,  Hadrian can’t help but feel condescended to in a way that he no longer has patience for. “About this war, about this place, especially about the man you think is your god.”

“Then why don’t you tell me,” Hadrian snaps, no longer caring about showing deference to the divine. “Tell me why you spared my life.”  
Samot walks up to him, and takes his hand - the hand of flesh, not of stone - in his own, holding it gently. “Hadrian,” he begins, places his other hand on top of Hadrian’s as well, but Hadrian makes a decision. _No_. He doesn’t fully understand Samot’s intentions, but he refuses to be a part of them anymore. Hadrian pulls his hand back before he can continue speaking.

“Why did you even bother granting me mercy if you were going to keep me here? I’m not yours. I never will be.” Samot looks back at him, face unreadable.

“Very well,” he says after what seems like an eternity. “We can return now.”

Samot stops asking for him. He stops visiting altogether, and although he knows that this is just a return to the status quo of the time before he was amongst the god’s soldiers, Hadrian can’t help but wonder how Tabard feels about that (though not so much that he seeks out an answer). He returns to doing patrols. The loneliness returns, and this time it is nearly crushing, and the temptation to reach out to Tabard for something, _anything_ is nearly overpowering. But he prays instead. He prays to the god-king Samothes, and trains, and goes on his patrols with the silent pala-din, and waits for deliverance. And it comes.

 _There’s a gap in the patrol along the southwest for bit each night_ , Hadrian realizes late one night. He’s making his way along the western border of the tower, two pala-din by his side, when he looks across the empty field to the south and thinks back to the routes he’s walked there so many times at night. It feels like divine inspiration - he’s seen it so many times, and only noticed the pieces fitting together now. Perhaps it is.

◊

 _Have Throndir and Fantasmo been looking for me?_ Hadrian wonders as he makes his way through a section of rubble. _Do they just think I died here? Do Hella, Fero, and Lem know?_ They’re not new questions, but they feel particularly urgent now as he makes his way to the path on the patrol that he’s been eyeing for weeks.

 _Around the corner_ , he thinks as he moves, heart beating as the reality of leaving finally begins to sink in. _And then out to the Erasure_ . _And then home._

“You are leaving,” Tabard’s voice cuts through the dark, not even bothering to ask it as a question. He is _close_ . Hadrian freezes for a moment, then reaches for his sword with the arm that is still made of flesh. He’s considered this scenario before, in the hours and hours and hours of walking and planning. _Samothes will keep me alive_ , he thinks, tries to relax the muscles where the tendons meet stone and adjust his shoulder to open a gap to the flesh and fabric between his pauldron and breastplate. _The pain will go away_. He prays the stone prevents bleeding somehow, he prays even harder that the adrenaline will be enough for him to escape Tabard with only one arm to fight. He wraps his hand around the hilt of the golden sword and braces himself for Tabard to take control of his marble arm. But even as he begins to unsheath it, nothing wrenches control of his arm away from him.

“I won’t stop you.”

“What?” Hadrian doesn’t loosen his grip on his sword, but turns around to see Tabard standing next to a toppled pillar. His expression is as blank as the faces of the other pala-din, but Hadrian can somehow tell that a significant effort is going into maintaining the detached aura that Tabard is presenting. “Why?”

“Because every second you are here, my Lord pulls further away from me,” he responds, and although his tone is even, Hadrian can see his eye belying how difficult it is for Tabard to keep it steady. “I wish he had never spared you.”

Hadrian considers apologizing again, but catches himself. _For what? None of this was my doing._ Instead, he stares at Tabard for a second, dumbfounded. “He won’t be happy if you let me go,” he says, aware that it is a stupid thing to be saying, but too shocked to do the proper thing and leave.

“He isn’t happy with me anyways.” Tabard is not a defeated man by any means, but he is pained. Hadrian can see it, could feel it in his kiss, and he understands the pain. They are men of faith, and the idea of Samothes casting him aside like he’s seen Samot cast Tabard aside makes something twist in Hadrian’s chest. He wishes he didn’t have so much empathy for the pala-din, but he does, and it drives him to step forward.

At the very least, he’s labelling it empathy. It is the easiest way to explain the urge that makes him reach out to touch Tabard’s cheek, though the other man grabs his wrist and stops him.

“Go.” Tabard says.

Hadrian goes.

 


End file.
